52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-35): A Spot on the Map
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. For this week's prompt I immediately thought of a very specific, physical location that holds deep ties in my wife's family history: Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
This is the first in a series of three planned posts about the Bagby's buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-34): Long Lasting
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com.
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| Ludvig Olsen. C.1905-10. ©️2026 Edward Olsen |
When tracing family history, we often look for official documents—census records, passenger manifests, and marriage certificates. But sometimes the clearest evidence of where we come from sits right on the dinner table.
For my family, that dish is Gurkensalat (German Cucumber Salad). The prompt I am using for this week's post is Family Recipe Friday, suggested by Lynn Palermo of The Armchair Genealogist, and I am featuring this summer favorite of mine.
Today, August 6th, I'm recognizing the birth anniversaries of the two eldest children of Sidney David Rogers and Susan Elizabeth Lloyd — Frank (b. Aug 6, 1885) and an unnamed baby boy (b. Aug 6, 1886). Sadly, both boys died young: Frank passed away on July 4, 1888, and the unnamed baby died at just six weeks of age. Having married on October 5, 1884, this was a tragic start to Sidney and Susan's marriage. With Frank conceived so shortly after their wedding, their first two children were gone in a flash.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-31): A Day in the Life
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of June 29 is "A Day in the Life."
To recreate a "Day in the Life" of Henry Miller in 1826, I tasked Google Gemini with generating this narrative based directly on my genealogical facts and historical sources. By pairing the record of Miller’s 160-acre clearing with sensory details drawn from David McCullough’s The Pioneers, Gemini drafted the post below. McCullough’s account of the frontier—where the endless ringing of axes created a constant wilderness rhythm and the smoke of burning brush filled the air—illustrates the grueling effort required as Miller deadened the trees and hewed logs for his permanent house.
The year 1826 in the wilderness was defined by relentless, physical labor and the constant, rhythmic transformation of the landscape. For Henry Miller, clearing 160 acres meant engaging in a monumental effort to tame the forest using traditional methods of "deadening" to make way for the plow, the crops, and a permanent home.
The process began with the initial girdling (hacking a deep ring through the bark and sapwood). The immediate goal was not to drop the trees, but to starve them.
The day begins long before the sun clears the dense canopy. The defining sound of the frontier morning is the ringing of the axe—a sharp, metallic clink-thwack that echoes off the timber and carries for miles through the humid air.
To clear such vast acreage alone, Henry employs the method of girdling. Rather than felling every massive oak, walnut, or hickory, he hacks a deep, continuous ring through the bark around each trunk's circumference, severing the sap flow and "deadening" the tree.
Moving a 160-acre parcel from deadened timber to clear, plantable agricultural land was a multi-year, multi-stage process on the 1826 frontier. Girdling killed the trees, but turning those standing skeletons into cleared fields or building timber required a distinct progression of labor, seasonal timing, and specific tools.
Before any deliberate felling took place, nature did a significant portion of the work.
When it was time to bring the main trunks down—either to clear the field entirely or to harvest timber for building—settlers used three primary methods to transition from deadened trees to fallen logs:
For building logs (like those needed for Henry Miller's hewed house) or specific timber needs, trees were felled intentionally using a heavy felling axe.
To clear mass acreage without exhausting endless human muscle, settlers frequently used fire to fell deadened trees.
Many deadened trees were simply left standing until high winds or root rot brought them down naturally. Once on the ground, they were chopped into manageable lengths, rolled into log heaps using oxen or neighborly "log-rolling" bees, and set ablaze.
By midday, the forest air turns thick, hazy, and blue. McCullough describes this sensory environment in The Pioneers—the heavy, inescapable smell of burning brush that hung over every new settlement in the timber country.
Henry spends hours dragging undergrowth, deadfall, and trimmed branches into massive "slash" heaps. When lit, the fires create a pungent mix of scents:
As the heat of the day peaks, Henry shifts his focus from clearing the land to establishing his residence. Constructing a true hewed log house is a statement of permanence—a significant upgrade from the rough, round-log cabins of temporary squatters.
Henry works methodically with his essential iron tools:
The afternoon is devoted to the corners of the structure. Using a heavy wooden mallet and sharp chisel, Henry cuts precise dovetail or half-notch joints into the ends of each log. The muffled thump-clink of wood against chisel is a quieter, more deliberate sound than the chopping in the woods.
The heavy timbers are levered up skids using wooden handspikes and sheer muscle. Each log settles tightly into the notch below it, so carefully fitted that the sheer weight of the timber creates a solid, wind-resistant wall ready to be chinked and daubed before winter.
As twilight settles over the clearing, the roar of the brush heaps subsides into glowing mounds of orange embers. The constant ringing of steel against wood finally stops, leaving behind a deep quiet broken only by the crackle of remaining fires and the high-pitched hum in Henry's ears from a full day of heavy chopping.
He stands amidst a landscape filled with standing, deadened trees and the rising skeleton of his new dwelling. The 160 acres are no longer an unbroken wilderness; they have been marked by human effort, the smell of woodsmoke, and the clean geometry of hewn logs.
In our next post, we explore the unwritten history behind "The Great Miller Exodus of 1803–1805". We will step back in time to imagine the dinner table conversations inside Samuel Miller's Virginia brick home following his death in 1803—the very year Ohio achieved statehood: The "Specie" Advantage: How the final settlement of Samuel’s estate provided the hard cash needed to bypass squatter life and purchase prime acreage in Ohio. The Mass Migration: The strategic decisions and family unity that transformed a single patriarch's legacy into a multi-generational frontier settlement.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-30): Free Space
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of July 20 is "Free Space."
As genealogists, we often go searching for milestones: the marriages, the homesteads, and the long lives that built our family trees. But sometimes, we uncover a life cut short—a story that simply slipped through the cracks of family memory over the past century and a half, lost to time until records bring it back to light.
In this post, I am rediscovering and sharing the forgotten story of my great-great-grandfather’s sister, Annie Strahle, 137 years after her death.
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of July 13 is "A Source I Want to Understand Better." While Amy Johnson Crow provides a prompt, she understands that people will interpret it in many different ways. I have chosen to interpret a "source" as the specific document used to prove a fact, rather than a broader collection. For this week's post, I am going to get a better understanding of the 1920 U.S. Census for Elizabeth Sulki in the Borough of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.
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| This 1920 Census entry serves as the "fingerprint" of the family after they fled Washington. While the surname is recorded as "Sulki," the seven sons listed confirm the identity of the family. |
For my inaugural "Mystery Monday" genealogy blogging prompt, we are stepping into a chilling homefront mystery from the final year of the Civil War, uncovered through a striking contrast between official state records and a Depression-era federal history project.
[Update 11 Jul 2026: New evidence has been found! Please scroll to the bottom of this post for the resolution of this mystery.]
When researching family history, we often find that official documentation tells only half the story, leaving oral traditions to fill in the gaps. Such is the case with Mary A. E. Malone (1824–1864), daughter of Daniel and Wilmouth Malone of Dinwiddie County, Virginia.
| Source Document | Date Recorded | Details Provided |
|---|---|---|
| Dinwiddie County Death Register | September 1864 | Lists her cause of death simply as: "Killed." |
| WPA Historical Inventory (Report DIN288) | November 19, 1936 | "Mary A. E. Malone, born May 5, 1824. Killed September 16, 1864, by a soldier during the war between the states." |
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| Clipped portion of the 1864 Death Register for Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Mary is the bottom line, and the cause of death is visible in the far right column. |
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-27): A Record I Read Differently Now
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of June 29 is "A Record I Read Differently Now."
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-26): A Hard Choice
The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of June 22 is "A Hard Choice."
If you are looking to add a touch of dramatic, late-winter elegance to your garden, look no further than the ‘Ruby Davidson’ Camellia. For camellia enthusiasts and casual gardeners alike, this particular variety stands out as a true masterpiece of form and color.
The ‘Ruby Davidson’ is a registered cultivar of Camellia sasanqua, revered for its formal, highly structured blooms. While some camellias sport a loose, peony-like form, the 'Ruby Davidson' is celebrated for its precise, symmetrical beauty:
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of June 1 is "A Place that Matters." This post is also the 6th in my "The Ohioans!" series.
In the early 19th century, erecting a brick residence in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area was a powerful statement of permanence. While many neighbors likely lived in timber-frame or log structures, the Old Miller Homestead signaled a family that had truly "arrived."
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| Image created by ChatGBT |
As genealogists, we are often left to piece together the final chapters of our ancestors' lives through a scattered trail of ink and paper. Sometimes, those records don't just tell us where someone lived—they reveal a dramatic, heartbreaking story of risk, transition, and a family's final show of deep respect. For Rudolf Soltis, a span of just six years captured by federal and local records tells a story of hard labor, transition, and a final, permanent resting place that speaks volumes about his character and work ethic.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the week of May 11 is "At the Cemetery." This week, we mark the anniversary of the passing of John Furman Rogers Sr., who died on May 17, 1965, in Wilmington, North Carolina.
John Furman Rogers was born October 15, 1887, in Florence County, South Carolina, to Sidney D. Rogers and Susan Elizabeth Lloyd. He was the third child born to Sidney and Susan; sadly, his two older brothers died as infants before he was born. Sidney and Susan eventually had a total of seven children, including my wife's Great-Grandfather, Asa Lloyd Rogers.
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| An undated photo of (L-R) James Sidney, Minnie Ola, Asa Lloyd, Bessie A. and John Furman. Photo credit:©️M. Johnson. |
In our previous posts, we stood on the battlefields of the Revolution with Moses Epps. But as I dug deeper into the records, I realized that Moses wasn’t the only one in this "spatial cluster" from Halifax who answered the call to arms. Military service was a thread that ran through the entire family and their closest neighbors. This "military hue" didn't stop with Moses; it touched Daniel in 1812 and his five grandsons during the Civil War.
As a family historian, I seek to preserve these records in their full context—acknowledging the complexities of the era, from military service to the impact of slavery—to provide a complete and honest history for the generations that follow. By documenting these truths without decoration, we provide a transparent legacy for those who come after us.
For this week’s post, I am returning to a format that highlights both the shared paths and the distinct records of my wife's ancestors: Side-by-Side Sunday. This week, the calendar brings us to the burial anniversary of Amanda Bagby Burton, who was laid to rest on May 5, 1941. By placing her final records next to those of her husband, William H. Burton, we can observe the symmetry of a life spent together in the Virginia countryside.
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| Amanda and William's tombstone in Dennis Cemetery, Fluvanna County, Virginia. Photo Credit: Brian Gallagher via FindaGrave.com memorial 161296107. |
The Vanguard of a New Identity: Ole (Lauritsen) Lorensen
Tradition often suggests staying put—carrying on the customs, names, and lands of those who came before. But for my great-granduncle, Ole Lorensen, "tradition" was something he both carried with him and consciously reshaped. Born in Norway at a time when resources were scarce and farms were small, he became the catalyst for a generational shift that would eventually bring six of seven siblings to American shores.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt this week (2026-17) is "Working for a Living" and I'm covering the early work of my great-grandmother Caroline "Lena" Schmitz who was born December 18, 1888, to Peter Schmitz and Catharine Pirron in New York City. For this week's blog post, I am focusing on a "Year of Change" for Lena, covering a pivotal window in her young adult life.
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